Steam – do if the Steam client gets clogged with nearly-complete downloads

Yes, Steam client updates can be downloaded manually via HTTP, if the names of the update files are known.

In my case, Steam seems to be unable to handle the poor Internet connection. When the network gets interrupted briefly, Steam just issues an error and exits; if I start it again, it can't resume the process and everything have to be downloaded again. So I'd like to use a robust download utility that supports pause and resume (i.e. HTTP Range Request).

The files it failed to download can be found in bootstrap_log.txt. (It is located under the directory ~/.local/share/Steam/logs on Linux). For example, this is one of the entries in the log:

Package file tenfoot_dicts_all.zip.c74a3a9beb77a280cfd8761b901a80ed0f6a3173 missing or incorrect size

To apply the updates manually:

• Using your favourite download utility, download http://media.steampowered.com/client/ + package file name. In this case, it's http://media.steampowered.com/client/tenfoot_dicts_all.zip.c74a3a9beb77a280cfd8761b901a80ed0f6a3173.

• Put the files you've downloaded where Steam Client would. On Linux it is ~/.local/share/Steam/package/

• Start Steam.

And now Steam should be extracting the updates right away, without downloading them again.

Credit: aiusepsi on the r/Steam community on Reddit. Link to post

I know of only one way that this can happen in windows, and has nothing to do with Steam other than their not-so-great decision to install all content into Program Files.

If you are on Windows 7 or Windows Vista, and you have UAC set to ON, then change it later to OFF, this can happen.

UAC does thing evil thing where if a program tries to write to a "protected" area like Program Files, EVEN IF YOU ARE ADMINISTRATOR, when you get a UAC prompt and give permission, it actually writes any files that would normally go into that directory into a "virtualized" directory somewhere else.

If you turn off UAC, that will no longer happen, and as an awesome bonus, it will no longer know about the files that it virtualized.

So in your case, if you had UAC on, installed a ton of games, then later got sick of UAC and turned it off, this would happen as you described.

See the second paragraph in "Features" in the article on User Account Control.

If you have done this and turn on UAC again, your content will come back, but be a TOTAL mess because if you've downloaded more stuff with UAC off, then that will be invisible when you turn UAC on, and vice versa.

this drove me a little crazy once before I realized what was happening.

i'm curious to know if this is your issue.